


Reflection

by fardareismai



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3846082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Eleventh Doctor can no longer remember if he's a good man.  He knows who can give him the answer, but he doesn't want to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WillowRosenbergWinchester](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillowRosenbergWinchester/gifts).



> **This is the sixth installment of my Tumblr 500 follower fic giveaway.  WillowRosenbergWinchester requested the following:**
> 
>  
> 
> __  
> **Rose/11, gen, the swirly tie**  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> **This... ended up being angst for reasons that escape me entirely.  I hope that's okay...**
> 
> * * *

He knew she was there, but he would not turn around. Would not look into the mirror on the back of his wardrobe door, reflecting the space that she occupied. Would under no circumstances acknowledge her. He'd known she would be there from the moment he opened the door and seen it, coiled like a snake on the shelf.

He was, as he'd told Amelia, a mad man in a box, but there was no reason to allow that madness free reign. In front of his companions (and River who fell into another category entirely) he could pretend that it was joy bordering on mania. Childishness and boundless energy.

Here, alone (but not quite) in his room there was no one to perform for and madness was a bleak inevitability, no laughing matter.

She hadn't been there in ages. Not since he'd changed bodies. Not since he'd chosen to forget. Not since he'd been another man, mourning the loss of the love of his lives. He'd taken comfort in it then, the slow circle down the drain of insanity, into the black.

"They're good for you, you know," she said, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut to keep from turning to see her. "Your new companions."

He didn't say anything, just stood, eyes closed, hand on the shelf of his wardrobe as though hiding it from sight he could deny its existence and hers.

They said it wasn't madness to talk to yourself, only when you started to answer yourself had you truly gone off the deep end.

He'd had some experience with that type of madness in the past, however.

_"I am he and he is me."_

_"Koo-koo ka-choo?"_

This was different. It wasn't some fool in a top hat or the old grump who still believed in the inferiority of humans waiting for him behind his back. It was something far more dangerous- someone who knew him far better than himself.

"She adores you, your Amelia. Thinks you're the best kind of person, and that's good. You need someone who sees the best in you. It helps when someone believes in you. You start to believe in yourself. It makes you brave."

He remembered. He usually preferred to forget, to keep moving, to keep running, but he did remember. Not Amelia's traditionally Scottish colouring- red hair and green eyes and pale skin- but dark brows that gave lie to the sunshine colour of the hair that surrounded the pink-flushed face and eyes the colour of slow time that saw him as a hero when he had been at his least heroic.

She'd loved him at his least lovable.

She'd made him brave enough to love her back.

Amy's delusions about good men and heroes couldn't do that.

"She lets you get away with too much though. She's too impressed with you. In awe a bit. Comes of meeting her when she's a kid. You're her hero, and she thinks you can do no wrong. Donna was right- you need someone to stop you."

Thinking of Donna hurt, but not nearly as much as  _Her_ voice.

Donna had never seen him as a hero. More of a universal handyman- fix the things that need fixing simply because they needed to be done. Practical, that was his Donna.

Martha… it was hard to think of Martha as well, though he knew that she was happy and safe. Martha had wanted him to take care of people. She'd wanted him to be  _a_ doctor, like her. Save one person at a time, sometimes at the risk of the whole population. He'd taught her what it meant to be  _the_ Doctor, and she'd hated him for it.

But there had been a voice once. When he'd been so angry he let a woman die for her crimes who had touched him and asked him to save her. When he had stood facing his greatest enemy, on the brink of genocide yet again, who had stood between him and his own hell and forced him to remember who he was. A voice that he had run from, but always returned to. Burned up a sun just to hear again.

Allowed to drive him mad as he listened to her now.

"Not your Rory though. He's not impressed with you, no matter how impressive you think you are."

His knees nearly buckled. He could hear the smile in her voice and he could see it, even with his eyes shut, he could see that generous mouth widening and that tongue (that bloody  _tongue_ ) peeking out at the corner.

The tall, skinny version had smiled with his tongue as well. A habit he'd picked up from her. His hand clenched on the shelf of his wardrobe in memory of another man.

A better man?

"That's important, someone questioning you. It keeps you humble. As humble as you're capable of being, anyway. They balance you. Help you remember what you are, and remember when to stop."

"Why are you here?" he asked, and was surprised at the bitterness in his voice. "What bloody business do you have being here?"

He was shocked to realize that he was furious. It had been a bad day, the kind of day that, before, he'd have fallen into her arms and, later, into her bed. He'd have lost himself in her body, in the rush of endorphins and hormones and emotions. He'd have found solace in her compassion and her ever-present forgiveness.

No longer.

He told himself every day since she'd gone that he didn't need her. He told himself he could do without her. He'd done the same once, when he'd been dark and Northern and so very broken. After she'd said "no" that first time. After the TARDIS tried for months to remind him of her everywhere they stopped. Before "it travels in time." He'd sworn he didn't need a companion, particularly not one with a smile like the sun and bravery to spare.

What a fool he'd been.

He'd been older then. He was younger than that now.

"You forgot today, Doctor," she said quietly.

It had been one of those days when nobody had lived. Amelia had wanted to go somewhere that they could "do some good." Rory had been worried but the Doctor had ignored him and landed them in the middle of a revolution.

He could have sworn that it had ended peacefully, that revolution, but he'd been wrong. He'd landed them in a war zone. He was so often wrong these days. He forgot too much. Everything except what he most wanted to forget.

"How many people were in that city?"

_That_ was what he wanted to forget.  _Who_ he wanted to forget.

"I don't know," he grated. The city had burned and it had been his fault.

"You  _wish_ you didn't know. Tell me, Doctor."

"Sixteen million."

"Twice the population of London in my day, give or take."

He kept his back to her, refusing to turn, though he finally opened his eyes. He knew what she would look like. She never changed- in his hearts she was always young and beautiful and perfect, just as he'd left her. Nothing would ever change that.

He didn't want her there.

"What do you want me to say? Do you want me to tell you I regret it? That I'm sorry? Do you want me to ask your forgiveness?"

"Do you need my forgiveness?"

He may not have lit the fire, but he'd handed the matches to the child who had. Rory had said not to trust her, they knew nothing about her, but Amy- trusting, naive Amy- had said that she had a good feeling about her.

She was brilliant, Amy, but didn't have the feel for people that… other companions had had.

" _Seriously though, you can't." "Seriously though, I can."_

" _It's the sunlight, that's all it wants… It's not the one holding a gun on me."_

" _Since when do humans need slaves?"_

The Doctor had wanted to believe that he could save the day- turn a violent, bloody revolution to peaceful protest- change the course of history, make time his tool once again- and so he'd given vital information to the girl.

And she had torn the city down brick-by-brick.

His fault.

"There is no forgiveness for me."

When he'd seen the city burning, he'd gone to find the girl. She'd been shot. He could have saved her but he didn't. The flick of his sonic on the proper setting and she'd have lived. He had watched as she bled to death in the alleyway, while Rory had tried to staunch the blood and Amy had begged him to help.

They had returned to the TARDIS and Amy and Rory had vanished into their room. Amy had looked at him like he was a monster, and Rory like he was a slug.

He thought, perhaps, he was both.

He'd come to his own room, unable to take the sullen censure of the empty console room. He'd wanted to hide away where Amy and Rory would not be able to find him to ask him (demand of him) to take them home. To leave him alone.

They'd be better without him, he knew. He was better with them. He was too selfish to send them away. Too much a coward to ask them to stay.

So he'd hidden like a child playing a game.

"I'm only here because you want me here, Doctor. If there's no forgiveness, then tell me what you want."

Finally he turned, a scrap of silk clutched in his hand. He hadn't worn it, hadn't  _seen_ it since that day on the beach. The last time he'd laid eyes on her in life.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at him with her head cocked to one side, her hair as bright blonde and eyes as over-made-up as ever. She wasn't smiling, but she didn't look upset either. She wasn't wearing blue leather, but a white dress. He'd imagined her in a dress like that so many times, it shouldn't have surprised him, but it did. It nearly destroyed him.

He held up the tie, brown with red swirls. He'd finally gotten the courage to wear it again for the first time since that fateful, horrible goodbye on that god-forsaken beach, and like magic it had seemed to conjure her one last time. One last touch, one last look, one last goodbye, one last kiss given to a man who was and wasn't him.

He'd considered throwing the thing into a black hole, but it had vanished, held by the TARDIS until now.

"You loved him," he said, holding out the fist like an accusation.

"There's no past-tense, Doctor. I  _love_ him. And the one in the leather. And the scarf, the cricket uniform, the jumper, the cape, the velvet, the frock coat, the top hat… even the bow tie. Rose Tyler loves the Doctor. It's a fact of the universe, don't you know that?"

_Then why did you choose him over me_ , the Doctor wondered.  _Didn't you know what I would have said? Were the words so important, really?_

"Then tell me," the Doctor said, kneeling before her like a supplicant before his god- she was the only god he had ever needed or wanted. "Tell me I'm still the man I was when you loved me. Tell me I'm the man you believed I was when I didn't believe. Tell me I'm the man you made me still."

"Oh Doctor," she breathed, and reached forward to take his face in her hands.

He collapsed forward, face in her lap, and wept like a child. She stroked his hair, soothing him gently, nearly singing like a lullaby.

"Oh my Doctor," she crooned.

Finally when, like a summer storm, the tears had passed, the Doctor lifted his face from the coverlet of his bed. She wasn't there- had never been there, but the silk tie was still crumpled in his fist.

She hadn't answered his question.


End file.
